The Opposite.

All it takes is a little bit of adrenaline.

Something to kick start that fight-or-flight response, and my brain chemistry shifts.

This overwhelming heat begins in your veins, and you have milliseconds to make a choice -- squash it and move on with yourself, to nap away the draining effort until equilibrium re-establishes itself; or you close your eyes and with lip-biting passion scream YES with every fiber of your being and let the heat consume you, shake you, and lift you above yourself, above everything, to a place only unstable endorphins can reach.

It's not a long process, like its reverse.  Just one or two events, and once that choice to let it in is made, and BAM, I'm a millionmilesaminuteandhavenointentionsofslowingdown.

I imagine it's what someone with ADHD would feel like after taking speed followed by a triple-espresso, minus the heart arrhythmia.

It's not that my brain suddenly and instantly shifts from a crawl into Mach 9.  Ask Hubs -- I am always about seven steps ahead of him because, simply, that's how fast my brain works at any given time.  It's like I can go through all the possibilities of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book in a matter of seconds and thusly decide on the best course of action.  It doesn't mean I'm always right -- I am surprised on occasion, by a reaction I didn't expect or a circumstance so left field I couldn't anticipate it.  But generally, I'm on it and am full of I told you so's and You should have just listened to me's and I knew this would happen's after the fact.

But that's the beauty of this disorder ... and the curse.

I don't sleep.  I want to, my body cries out for it, but I can't.  The sheer whoosh of my thoughts alone keep me up, never mind the contents of those thoughts.  I start a million projects and ideas and never completely finish them because ohmigodihaveafabulousideathatneedsadressedrightnow.  The whirlwind of cacophonous thoughts never cease, even when I'm trying to exorcise their demons by doing as much as possible at once, and often into all hours of the night.

I clean, because my super-heightened brain can't stop noticing the imperfection of dirt, dust, and grime; imperfection implies flaws and flaws are at the heart of weakness and I AM NOT WEAK!  Cleaning becomes a form of battle -- you can't leave your mark on my life, oh no, because I have a cleaning spray and a microfiber cloth to clean your shit right up.  And no one else's clean (except maybe my mom's) can hold a flame to my clean.  And living amongst cleanliness -- and the order cleaning creates -- quiets one little cry in the Tabernacle chorus between my ears.

I lose weight because I'm too busy to eat and too keyed up to notice the shaking in my hands may be from low blood sugar, not fueled from barely-containable anticipation and drive.  I ingest the bare minimum, usually some form of straight protein accompanied by a sugar, to keep the flame inside high, near combustion ... but not so much I have to stop moving.  I pick up workout regimes aplomb just to feel the movement in my body, the strength in my limbs, and the feeling of superiority and domination in my chest.

I've found myself beginning the cleaning frenzy to the dinning cries of my son in his crib, and I physically had to tell myself, aloud, to put down the paper towel and get the baby.  I have to regiment when I eat to coincide with Baby's feedings because that's the only time I'll sit down long enough to eat something decent -- and what good am I to anyone passed out on the floor?  My workouts are careful and I have to forgive myself daily for not being what I once was -- because this shell of blood and bone has changed in ways no amount of crunches or lunges will reconstruct.  I refuse to follow through ideas carefully crafting themselves in my head because I don't want them to engulf me right now, when I most need to be indefinitely on my toes.  Or worse yet, I don't want to abandon them mid-process because this whole ordeal escalates and needs my undivided attention while my creativity just suffers a case of blue balls and consequently dries up the next time I try to exercise it.

And these are the things that are nearly impossible, in the wake of everything, for me to control.  Usually, in my younger days, I'd just go shopping and wear myself out, but that's no longer an option I can even begin to entertain.  I have to cope within our means, within myself, so that when everything comes to a head, I will still be strong enough mean enough brave enough present enough to stare them in the face and say I am not someone you can just walk all over; you owe us, and you will pay.

Some people call it high strung.  

Some people call it being a bitch.

Some people call it insane.

I call it survival instinct -- there when I need it; an unfathomable force to be reckoned with, the closest to superhuman powers that a human body can posses.

Hubs has long called me his pit bull; his secret weapon of attack with my relentless assaults.

But it's times and trials like these that I know I was made for this.